SPRING GROVE – When Laurie Hoirup was 18 months old, doctors diagnosed her with a form of muscular dystrophy and predicted a short life.

Since then, she has climbed trees, gone swimming, danced, earned a master’s degree, married, had two children and become a grandmother – all while being confined to a wheelchair.

In 2005, after Hoirup worked in several full-time administrative positions, then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger appointed her deputy director of the California State Council on Developmental Disabilities, a federally funded, independent state agency designed to help people with disabilities. Schwarzenegger later appointed her chief deputy of the agency.